Still jealous of Sean "I Actually Tell People To Call Me 'P.Diddy' Entirely of My Own Volition" Combs's diamond-encrusted iPod? Well, stop it, Junior, because now you can out-bling The Artist Formerly Known As "Puff-Daddy" and you don't even have to get Hewlett-Packard panting after you for an endorsement deal to do it. Check it out, folks; as mentioned at MacMinute, the Crystalmini®. We may not be much for the jewel-studded look in general (we blame a freak childhood BeDazzler accident that left us emotionally scarred for life), but the Divine Fashion Plates in our audience assure us that the Crystalmini is officially smoove wif a capital smoo.

Consider the many ways in which the Crystalmini is superior blingwise to the P.Diddy iced-up hPod: first of all, whereas the DiddyPod has only 120 diamonds, the Crystalmini boasts "about 1,000 Swarovski Crystals," the better to blind the plebs with. The DiddyPod's diamonds also happen to be arranged in the shape of the (gag) HP logo, which detracts from its Style Quotient considerably. In contrast, the Crystalmini is studded all over, and you can even have one made to order with different-colored crystals to depict a logo or design you specify. (Check out the leopard-print one to get a sense of the possibilities.) There's also the fact that even the unadorned iPod mini is currently 30% hipper than its big brother, and we assume that factor carries over to the blinged-up versions.

Cons? Well, sure, there are cons; for one thing, P.Diddy got his hPod for free, whereas you're going to have to drop between $699 and $899 for a Crystalmini. For another, the DiddyPod's diamonds and one-of-a-kind status probably mean that when Mr. Combs's fifteen minutes finally go poof and he hits rock-bottom, he'll probably be able to hock it for a lot more than you'll be able to get for your Crystalmini when you inevitably land in the gutter. And let's not forget the difference in storage space, here; after all, these things are music players, don'tcha know, and Diddy will be able to cart around ten times as much tuneage as you. (We assume HP gave him the 40 GB version, because slapping diamonds on the cheap model would just be silly.) Then again, you'll have over eight times as many little shiny things on your 'Pod than he will, so it all sort of evens out.

The point is, if you're willing to pay almost three or four times the normal retail price for your iPod mini, you can get one that'll turn even more heads than the vanilla model will-- and that's saying something. And yes, yours will, in fact, be cooler than P.Diddy's HP-branded party favor. You may not want to show it off in front of him, though; there was that whole "weapons charges" thing a few years back, the acquittal notwithstanding. At least make sure you have some good witnesses.